Tough Times as December Takes Hold

We asked a question in the introduction for this article, and now we are about to find out the answers. How would the British pound perform this week as we head into December?

An overview of the currency markets for November 30th – December 4th 2015

Here we are then at the start of another week. The British pound began on 1.5051 on Monday morning, but there was a loss of nearly half a cent that took it to 1.5009 by that evening. It regained some of its early losses the next day, rising to 1.5065 in the process. However, the second part of the week did not start well, with Wednesday and Thursday both posting losses for the pound. Finally, after dropping to 1.4983 on Thursday evening, it crept up to 1.5139 by Friday night, so the week as a whole wasn’t too bad at all.

The pound began on 1.4226 against the euro, before dropping to 1.4188 by Monday night. While there was some improvement on Tuesday, taking the British currency to 1.4212, this turned out to be the best news we would have for the remainder of the week. The remaining three days were not good at all, and the pound ended up dropping down to 1.3886 by Friday evening. That meant we’d lost over three cents across the week as a whole – not good news.

So could we do better against the Hong Kong dollar? We opened on 11.666 here before dropping to 11.632 on Monday evening. We then improved on Tuesday, recouping more than our initial losses and rising to 11.679 in the process. Then it was back to the poor second half of the week, just as we had seen against other currencies. We were down to 11.612 by Thursday evening, but then we had a pleasant last-minute surprise. This meant we closed on 11.733 by Friday evening, which was certainly good news.

You never know quite what to expect against the New Zealand dollar, and the same was true this week. We began with an exchange rate of 2.3031 before dropping down over the next four days in a disappointing start to the week. This meant we were down to a weak 2.2518 by Thursday evening. Although we improved on that to finish on 2.2662 by Friday, it was not enough to regain the significant losses we had seen up until that point.

Finally, we have the Australian dollar to go up against. We began on 2.0897 here… and unfortunately went through the exact same pattern we had seen against the Kiwi dollar. The first four days went the way of the dollar, with the pound sinking to 2.0429 by Thursday evening. It then recovered to 2.0690 by Friday’s close, but that wasn’t enough to recoup all its losses.

Notable events in the world of currency

A better performance against the Canadian dollar

To begin with it looked bleak against the Canadian dollar too, as the pound dipped down from the starting rate of 2.0089. But by Friday it had risen to 2.0191 so it was good news here.

A dreadful result against the Swiss franc

Back to bad news here as the pound tumbled from 1.5507 to finish on a woeful 1.5111 today.

Another bad result against the Icelandic krona too

Here too we didn’t achieve the results we wanted. The pound began the week on 199.986 and ended it on 196.341.

So it was far from being a week of good news this time around. Instead of getting strong results across the board, we were left with a few pieces of good news mixed in among the bad results. This meant the British pound was really not in good shape this week all told.

As December ploughs on in the currency markets, perhaps we can look forward to better news in the near future. We shall be looking at next week’s results closely, to see if the British pound can recoup some of the significant losses from this week.